that he had dealings with, from the bottom to the top of the house, seemed to make him feel that he either was, or would be, or ought to be, a grafter.  He could not so much as look at a house he had built, through the trees when he was going by, without wishing he could be a better man, and studying on how it could be managed.  His own first houses made him see things.  They proved to be the making of him, and if similar houses have not made similar men, it is their fault.  It might not be reassuring to the men who are now living in these first houses to dwell too much on this (and I might say he did not build them alone), but it seems to be necessary to bring out the most striking thing about Non in his first stage as a business man, viz.:  He hated his business.  He made up his mind he either would make the business the kind of business he liked or get out of it.  I did not gather from the way he talked about it that he had any idea of being an uplifter.  He merely had, apparently, an obstinate, doggedly comfortable idea about himself, and about what a thing would have to be, in this world, if he was connected with it.  He proposed to enjoy his business.  He was spending most of his time at it.

Other people have had this same happy thought, but they seem to manage to keep on being patient.  Non could not fall back on being patient, and it made him think harder.

The first thing he thought of was that doing his business as he thought he ought to, if he once worked his idea out, and worked it down through and organized it, might pay.  He almost had the belief that people might pay a man a little extra, perhaps, for enjoying his business.  It cannot be said that he believed this immediately.  He merely wanted to, and worked toward it, and merely contrived new shrewd ways at first of being able to afford it.  Gradually he began to notice that the more he enjoyed his business, the more he enjoyed it with his whole soul and body, enjoyed it down to the very toes of his conscience, the more people there were who stepped into his office and wanted him to enjoy his business on their houses.  It was what they had been looking for for years—­for some builder who was really enjoying his business.  And the more he enjoyed his business in his own particular way—­that of building a house for a man in less time than he said he would, and for less money, not infrequently sending him a check at the end of it—­the more his business grew.

I do not know that there would be any special harm in speaking of Non’s idea—­of just doing as you would be done by—­in more moral or religious language, but it is not necessary.  And I find I take an almost religious joy in looking at the Golden Rule at last as a plain business proposition.  All that happened was that Non was original, saw something that everybody thought they knew, and acted as if it were so.  Theoretically one would not have said that it would be original to take an old platitudinous